The Official Website of Dr. Candida R. Moss

Main menu

Monthly Archives: November 2013

University of Notre Dame theologian Candida Moss specializes in Bible studies and early Christian history and is the author most recently of The Myth of Persecution: How Early Christians Invented a Story of Martyrdom. Before participating in a panel on why we need saints, she talked about her suspicions involving a conspiracy to oppress cold caffeine drinkers and what it’s like to read The Great Gatsby for the first time as an adult.

.Our favorite Alaskan wants to rescue the holiday from angry atheists and liberal do-gooders, but what exactly does she have in mind? There’s scant talk of the Bible in her book.

The war on Christmas comes but once an election cycle, and with Good Tidings and Great Joy: Protecting the Heart of Christmas Sarah Palin, the former governor of Alaska, fires the first shot. The volume is part call to arms against the “Scrooges” secularizing Christmas, part theological statement about the meaning of Jesus’s birth, and part recipe book.

A high school student refused to compete with the bib number 666 because it’s the sign of the Beast. But is it? And just how can one run with God?

It sounds like a Disney version of Chariots of Fire. Kentucky high school student Codie Thacker made waves this week by refusing to compete in a cross-country race with the assigned bib number 666. As religious devotees, horror movie buffs, and Iron Maiden fans know, that’s what the Biblical book of Revelation calls the “number of the Beast.” Her coach tried without success to secure another number for the 16-year-old, but in the end Thacker nobly withdrew on religious grounds because, as she puts it, “I didn’t want to risk my relationship with God.”

A new poll finds that 26 percent of Americans believe the Jews killed Jesus. They’re historically ignorant, but they do read their Bible—that is who the New Testament blames, after all.

A poll released last week by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) reports that twenty-six percent of the American public continues to believe that “Jews were responsible for the death of Jesus.” Although the number has dropped from 31% in 2011, the ADL described it as “surprisingly large.”Read more here